Caught in the Headlights

The Egyptian upsurge: why we never saw it coming

A VERY GOOD PIECE

by Justin Raimondo, February 07, 2011

"The Obama administration has veered all over the map when it comes to the Egyptian uprising, beginning with Vice President Joe Biden declaring his fulsome support for his dear friend Hosni Mubarak, and refusing to characterize him as a dictator. That Obama’s crew were asleep at the wheel – delegating their response to a figure whom no one in Washington takes very seriously – was painfully apparent as the Cairo revolt showed every sign of becoming a full-scale nationwide revolution.

They are being chastised, however gently, for this, but the reality is that their blinkered vision comes with the territory. The Obama-ites, after all, are the inheritors of a global empire, the structure of which was determined long before any of them were born. The idea that they could separate themselves from this context, and see the world objectively, is a hopeful delusion many liberal critics of interventionism continue to entertain. The administration’s awkward stumbling in the face of the Egyptian protests should permanently disabuse them of this notion......

The Obama administration pretends to sympathize with the Egyptian people and the protesters in the streets, but in reality they are appalled – and frightened. The sight of masses of people upending a government friendly to the US has them shaking in their boots. What scares them the most is that they never saw it coming – just as they won’t see it approaching if and when it happens closer to home. They think the repressive apparatus of the State is invincible, and imagine their fortress of power to be impregnable – but so did Mubarak."